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The Australian Motorbike Workshop Promoting Positive Mental Health

Backstreet clubs in Sydney and Melbourne let motorbike nuts make friends while fixing up their pride and joy. But this is about more than hipsters drinking coffee and stroking their beards – this is about community and mental health.

Melbourne’s Kustom Kommune and Rising Sun Workshop in Sydney’s Newtown blur the lines between commercial business and community hub. Both concepts revolve around Australia’s burgeoning custom motorcycle scene and use their individual sites as communal spaces whose influence extends beyond the cafe racer crowd.

Essentially, they’re places to come and work on a bike, from simply maintaining a set of wheels to full-blown teardowns and rebuilds. At Rising Sun you pay an annual membership fee from $150, depending on the package, a nominal amount on top for ‘bench time’ (the hours spent in the shop), while Kustom Kommune charges a $300 annual fee with no bench time. The tools and hoists are included and there’s also decent food and coffee on offer. Rising Sun even provides workshops on tools and techniques.

Still, it’s the element of community that elevates these two spaces beyond being self-serving garages – think of them as petrol-soaked Men’s Sheds. Minus the old blokes.

“At Rising Sun one afternoon, all the bays were filled with regular members and the exchange was so natural,” says Rising Sun co-founder Adrian Sheather. “People were sharing tools, asking for help and offering advice without any thought of reward.

“I think we’re forgetting how to be people – you get on the bus with strangers, only know a handful of people at work, get lunch at the same place every day and then go home to the one or two people you know and watch Netflix. If you find happiness in that, it’s totally cool, but I’m pretty sure there are many who don’t.”

It’s where he feels a space like his comes in.

“People need that. It’s redefining what mental health is, as in maintaining it – like exercising or eating correctly.”

His colleague, Nick Smith, agrees.

“This mentality of working, earning, buying, throwing away, buying again – it feels unhealthy,” he says. “To maintain what you have is not just economically sustainable, but sustainable to our minds as well.

“Here it’s like turning the sign from ‘Open’ to ‘Gone Fishing’. We can’t all go fishing, but we all need to go somewhere else and do something that’s not home or work. Maybe it should say, ‘Gone wrenching.’”

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